FindZebra is a research project meant for use only by medical professionals, but that shouldn't stop anyone with a computer having a go. In the search box on the home page it says: "Start typing some patient symptoms". That sounds like an invitation to me.

Francis shone a light on what happens when we do not recognise the role of nurses as fundamental to the delivery of acute care. Crucially, some NHS organisations need to stop viewing nurses as just ‘a pair of hands’ and properly recognise and respect their skills as expert leaders in the patient’s journey.

We also need to ensure nurses’ skills are appropriately developed, to complement the overarching standards which Francis recommends. The RCN’s Principles of Nursing Practice lie at the very heart of this vision, setting out a framework for the provision of excellence in nursing care.

Robert Francis’ report highlighted that inadequate staffing levels contributed to the care failings at Mid Staffordshire. Importantly, he recommended stronger guidance for setting safe staffing levels, built into the new regulatory arrangements

The General Medical Council has launched an updated edition of its core guidance for UK doctors,Good medical practice. The guidance, last updated in 2006, includes the GMC's first guidelines on using social media. The GMC says all doctors will have to show they are complying with the updated standards for their revalidation - the new system of regular checks that came into force in December 2012.

Roy Lilley has written a blog post for the King's Fund discussing how pressures on budgets, costs and staffing have taken us into a world where we have to ask – how can we get patients to add value to their health care? He says:

I think it is only a matter of time before the public starts to say; 'Why do I have to queue on the phone to get an appointment with my GP?' 'Tell me why I have to have a day off to speak to someone I can talk to on Skype from my desk?' 'Why can't I use near-patient testing and the technologies I take for granted in the real world outside the NHS?'

My mother is 93 years old and has an iPad. She wants to know why she can’t FaceTime the practice nurse. So do I.

Wales has moved a step closer to a "deemed consent" organ donation system. The national assembly’s health and social care committee has agreed the general principles of the human transplantation (Wales) bill, which proposes to change the current "opt in" organ donation system. "Deemed consent" requires an individual to opt out if they do not want to donate.

Vaughan Gething, temporary chair of the health and social care committee, said:

Organisations and individuals on all sides of this delicate and at times emotive debate have made compelling points both for and against the Bill.

But the principle objective of the Bill – the need to increase the number of organ transplantations in Wales and to save more lives - cannot be ignored, and it is the one point on which everyone is agreed.

The Committee has significant concerns over how the issues of consent have been set out and explained. In particular we have remaining concerns over the role and involvement of family and friends.

We urge the Welsh Government to set out its position in a clear and consistent manner from this point forward. Without that clarity and consistency there is a real risk that there will not be public confidence in a deemed consent system. Clarity is equally important for the medical staff who will be handling these difficult situations.

The bill will be debated by the full assembly before being considered in further detail.

Health bodies are failing to listen to young people when making strategic decisions, reports the Children & Young People Now site. It says a study for the Children’s Commissioner for England found just 28% of local health plans referenced children and young people’s participation. The children’s commissioner, Maggie Atkinson, said:

Patient involvement in planning services is core to the government’s health reforms but when it comes to including the public in decision making, children’s views are all too often overlooked or disregarded.

Maggie Atkinson, the children's commissioner for England. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

Lunchtime headlines

If the act of prescribing a dummy treatment can help a patient psychologically, there is an argument that it could be ethically justified. The potential harm from possibly misleading a patient as to the treatment is outweighed by the benefit to their health via whatever mechanism the placebo effect operates on.

But if the placebo effect is mostly regression to the mean, and the act of the treatment has no effect, it is harder to ethically justify such treatments, as the patients would be likely to get better without it. And that's before considering the cost of placebo treatments in terms of medication and a GP's time performing unnecessary examinations or requesting blood tests or other screening that is not needed.

The wide variation in CCGs’ level of readiness might be explained by any number of local factors and issues encountered while setting up some CCGs. Interestingly, the variation is not related either to CCG size or to levels of deprivation in the local population. Small CCGs performed as well as larger CCGs, and CCGs in more deprived areas performed no worse and, if anything, slightly better than those serving affluent populations.

However, the results do show substantial regional variation. CCGs in the north of England received significantly fewer conditions, and at a lower level of severity.

It is a shame that the report's recommendations are unlikely to bring about positive change quickly. Inundated and understaffed organisations are already struggling to cope with further structural changes and the need to deliver budget cuts. Without additional funding to pay for more staff, appropriate training and better and increased supervision for staff, it is difficult to foresee how improvements can be made.

In the short term, this may mean that patients continue to suffer unacceptably at the hands of doctors and nurses who are trying to do the best they can with the very limited resources that are available to them.

We propose establishing an agreed single set of information, collected and held as much as possible in one place, taking into account both national and local requirements of what we know is needed to deliver the best care. Collect it once, and then use it for multiple purposes.

Any new requests for information would be policed to be "patient-proof" so the benefits outweigh the cost and staff time to collect, and they provide valuable intelligence about the quality of care. Crucially, alongside this, the NHS needs to catch up with other sectors and come in to the 21st century. The service must exploit all the technology on offer so staff can have more time to care for patients.

Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, is scrapping the need for hospitals to collate 76 – one in four – of the 305 different types of data they have to send to the Department of Health, health regulators and other bodies, as part of a reduction to the service's bureaucratic burdens.

On any ward or clinic, it is nurses who welcome me, show me compassion and empathy, and see me through the treatments the doctors mete out. Hospital doctors sweep in their white coats, wave their magic wands, and sweep out again. They may do the curing, but it is the nurses who the patient remembers from their stay in hospital. This is why the standard of nursing has to be high, and why the appalling care received by the patients at Stafford is a debacle for the whole NHS.

Morning headlines

Good morning and welcome to the daily live blog from the Guardian Healthcare Professionals Network. Throughout the day, we'll be bringing you news, comment and analysis from around the web.

The Guardian reports this morning that children whose parents or carers have mental health problems are poorly provided for and sometimes left at risk of harm, according to a report to be issued on Monday by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission, which also calls on the government to make it mandatory for data on such children to be collected.

Elsewhere, the BBC says a report from Cancer Research UK shows the number of teenagers and young adults dying from cancer in the UK has halved since the 1970s.

If there's a story, report or event you'd like to highlight – or you would like to share your thoughts on any of the healthcare issues in the news today – you can get in touch by leaving a comment below the line or tweeting us at @GdnHealthcare.